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News and discussion on issues relating to science and technology.enTue, 14 Aug 2018 22:19:35 GMTvBulletin60http://www.ronpaulforums.com/images/misc/rss.pnghttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/
SJW’s Flip Over “DOOM: Eternal” As It Mocks Leftist Political Correctness On Immigrationhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525385-SJW’s-Flip-Over-“DOOM-Eternal”-As-It-Mocks-Leftist-Political-Correctness-On-Immigration&goto=newpost
Tue, 14 Aug 2018 16:48:54 GMThttps://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2018/08/13/sjws-flip-doom-eternal-mocks-leftist-political-correctness-immigration/
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August 13, 2018
Nothing makes me giggle more than a brand flagrantly doing something to make social justice warriors angry, and Bethesda’s newest installment of their DOOM franchise has me in stitches.
During the recent QuakeCon in Grapvine, Texas at...https://www.redstate.com/brandon_mor...s-immigration/

Quote:

August 13, 2018

Nothing makes me giggle more than a brand flagrantly doing something to make social justice warriors angry, and Bethesda’s newest installment of their DOOM franchise has me in stitches.

During the recent QuakeCon in Grapvine, Texas at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, Bethesda Software gave a 25 minute presentation of their new game “DOOM: Eternal.” It was during the uninterrupted game play footage that we’re introduced to a holographic “greeter” artificial intelligence.

While this AI only appears several times throughout the gory video, when she does she spouts things that sound an awful lot like what a politically correct, sterilized, social justice figure would say. Apparently, her job is to encourage humans to greet the monstrous demons that have found their way into our realm with kindness and acceptance.

Within the video she can be heard rattling off phrases such as “my brothers and sisters, let’s help top make our friends transition into our world a comfortable one,” or “remember: ‘Demon’ can be an offensive term, refer to them as ‘mortally challenged.'”

You can watch the DOOM: Eternal game play reveal yourself, but be warned that it’s not a game for kids.

The Australian government has scheduled its "not-a-backdoor" crypto-busting bill to land in parliament in the spring session, and we still don't know what will be in it. The legislation is included in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's schedule of proposed laws to be debated from today (13 August) all the way into December. All we know, however, is what's already on the public record: a speech by Minister for Law Enforcement and Cybersecurity Angus Taylor in June, and the following from the digest of bills for the spring session: "Implement measures to address the impact of encrypted communications and devices on national security and law enforcement investigations. The bill provides a framework for agencies to work with the private sector so that law enforcement can adapt to the increasingly complex online environment. The bill requires both domestic and foreign companies supplying services to Australia to provide greater assistance to agencies."

Apart from the dodgy technological sophistry involved, this belief somewhat contradicts what Angus Taylor said in June (our only contemporary reference to what the government has in mind). "We need access to digital networks and devices, and to the data on them, when there are reasonable grounds to do so," he said (emphasis added). If this accurately reflects the purpose of the legislation, then the Australian government wants access to the networks, not just the devices. It wants a break-in that will work on networks, if law enforcement demands it, and that takes us back to the "government wants a backdoor" problem. And it remains clear that the government's magical thinking remains in place: having no idea how to achieve the impossible, it wants the industry to cover for it under the guise of "greater assistance to agencies."

And the morons will say "so what, can i still use Fedbook"?
]]>DamianTVhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525365-Australia-To-Pass-Bill-Providing-Backdoors-Into-Encrypted-Devices-CommunicationsCriminal Justice Software Code Could Send You To Jail And There’s Nothing You Can Do About Ithttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525353-Criminal-Justice-Software-Code-Could-Send-You-To-Jail-And-There’s-Nothing-You-Can-Do-About-It&goto=newpost
Mon, 13 Aug 2018 22:58:30 GMThttps://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/0..._justice_code/

Quote:

DEF CON American police and the judiciary are increasingly relying on software to catch, prosecute and sentence criminal suspects, but the code is untested, unavailable to suspects' defense teams, and in some cases provably biased.

In a presentation at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, delegates were given the example of the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS) system, which is used by trial judges to decide sentencing times and parole guidelines.

"The company behind COMPAS acknowledges gender is a factor in its decision-making process and that, as men are more likely to be recidivists, so they are less likely to be recommended for probation," explained Jerome Greco, digital forensics staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society.

"Women [are] thus more likely to get probation, and there are higher sentences for men. We don’t know how the data is swaying it or how significant gender is. The company is hiding behind trade secrets legislation to stop the code being checked."

These so-called advanced systems are often trained on biased data sets, he said. Facial recognition software is often trained on data sets filled with predominantly white men, he said, making it less effective at correctly matching up people of color, according to research by academics.

"Take predictive policing software, which is used to make decisions for law enforcement about where to patrol," Greco said. "If you use an algorithm based on data from decades of racist policing you get racist software. Police can say 'It's not my decision, the computer told me to do it,' and racism becomes a self-feeding circle."

...

Full article at link.

---

Innocent Until Proven GuiltyGuilty Until Proven Innocent
Guilty
]]>DamianTVhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525353-Criminal-Justice-Software-Code-Could-Send-You-To-Jail-And-There’s-Nothing-You-Can-Do-About-Ithttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525351-Astrophysicists-Discover-Time-May-Flow-Backwards-During-Gamma-Ray-Bursts&goto=newpost
Mon, 13 Aug 2018 22:07:50 GMThttps://sputniknews.com/science/201808131067165090-time-flow-anomaly-gamma-ray-bursts/
---Quote---
*Gamma-ray bursts, the extremely powerful explosions that release intense radiation pulses as stars collapse to form neutron stars, quark stars and black holes, are the brightest known electromagnetic phenomenon in the universe.*
Astrophysics researchers from the University of Charleston,...https://sputniknews.com/science/2018...ma-ray-bursts/

Quote:

Gamma-ray bursts, the extremely powerful explosions that release intense radiation pulses as stars collapse to form neutron stars, quark stars and black holes, are the brightest known electromagnetic phenomenon in the universe.

Astrophysics researchers from the University of Charleston, South Carolina, led by Dr. Jon Hakkila have discovered an anomaly in the behavior of the light curves of extremely powerful gamma-ray bursts, which they say exhibit complex, time-reversible wavelike structures.

Studying a data set of six extremely bright gamma-ray bursts documented by NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the researchers found evidence that each of the pulses displayed wave-like structures, with time effectively appearing to repeat itself backwards.

Dr. Hakkila and his team said this phenomenon was not necessarily evidence of the violation of the laws of causality and could be an indication, for example, of a blast wave or clump of particles radiating outwards while being reflected within the expanding gamma-ray burst jet as it moves through a symmetric distribution of clouds.

...

Great! Now we can go back in time and stop the Bankers from taking over!
]]>DamianTVhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525351-Astrophysicists-Discover-Time-May-Flow-Backwards-During-Gamma-Ray-BurstsGoogle Removes Open Source Anti-Censorship Tool From Chrome Storehttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525262-Google-Removes-Open-Source-Anti-Censorship-Tool-From-Chrome-Store&goto=newpost
Sat, 11 Aug 2018 00:27:22 GMThttps://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/08/10/2045210/google-boots-open-source-anti-censorship-tool-from-chrome-store
---Quote---
Google has removed the open-source Ahoy! extension from the Chrome store with little explanation. The tool facilitated access to more than 1,700 blocked sites in Portugal by routing traffic through its own proxies. TorrentFreak reports:
After servicing 100,000 users...https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/08...m-chrome-store

Quote:

Google has removed the open-source Ahoy! extension from the Chrome store with little explanation. The tool facilitated access to more than 1,700 blocked sites in Portugal by routing traffic through its own proxies. TorrentFreak reports:

After servicing 100,000 users last December, Ahoy! grew to almost 185,000 users this year. However, progress and indeed the project itself is now under threat after arbitrary action by Google. "Google decided to remove us from Chrome's Web Store without any justification," team member Henrique Mouta informs TF. "We always make sure our code is high quality, secure and 100% free (as in beer and as in freedom). All the source code is open source. And we're pretty sure we never broke any of the Google's marketplace rules."

Henrique says he's tried to reach out to Google but finding someone to help has proven impossible. Even re-submitting Ahoy! to Google from scratch hasn't helped the situation. "I tried and resubmitted the plugin but it was refused after a few hours and without any justification," Henrique says. "Google never reached us or notified us about the removal from Chrome Web Store. We never got a single email justifying what happened, why have we been removed from the store, or/and what are we breaching and how can we fix it." TorrentFreak reached out to Google asking why this anti-censorship tool has been removed from its Chrome store. Despite multiple requests, the search giant failed to respond to us or the Ahoy! team.

Thankfully, the Ahoy! extension is still available on Firefox.

]]>DamianTVhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525262-Google-Removes-Open-Source-Anti-Censorship-Tool-From-Chrome-StoreHydrogen fuel breakthrough in Queensland could fire up massive new export markethttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525193-Hydrogen-fuel-breakthrough-in-Queensland-could-fire-up-massive-new-export-market&goto=newpost
Thu, 09 Aug 2018 00:38:03 GMTTwo cars powered by hydrogen derived from ammonia will be tested in Brisbane today thanks to a Queensland breakthrough that CSIRO researchers say could turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower.

CSIRO principal research scientist Michael Dolan said it was a very exciting day for a project that has been a decade in the making.
"We started out with what we thought was a good idea, it is exciting to see it on the cusp of commercial deployment," he said.

For the past decade, researchers have worked on producing ultra-high purity hydrogen using a unique membrane technology.
The membrane breakthrough will allow hydrogen to be safely transported and used as a mass production energy source.
"We are certainly the first to demonstrate the production of very clean hydrogen from ammonia," Dr Dolan said.
"Today is the very first time in the world that hydrogen cars have been fuelled with a fuel derived from ammonia — carbon-free fuel."
Program leader David Harris said Australia has a huge source of renewable energy — sunlight and wind — that can be utilised to produce hydrogen.
But the highly flammable element is difficult to ship long distances because of its low density.
CSIRO researchers found a way to turn Australian-made hydrogen into ammonia, meaning it could be shipped safely to the mass market of Asia.

It is converted back into hydrogen using their membrane, then pumped into hydrogen-powered cars.
As of now, there are only five such cars in Australia, but there are tens of thousands across Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
"The key here is we can transport the hydrogen from the place where it is produced from renewable energy — let's say maybe that is in outback WA — and we can ship that form of ammonia anywhere in the world," Dr Harris said.
Independent industry association Hydrogen Mobility Australia said the technology has the potential to fill a gap in the chain to supply fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) with low-emissions hydrogen produced in Australia.

More at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-0...ntial/10082514
]]>Swordsmythhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525193-Hydrogen-fuel-breakthrough-in-Queensland-could-fire-up-massive-new-export-marketEngineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomouslyhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?525149-Engineers-teach-a-drone-to-herd-birds-away-from-airports-autonomously&goto=newpost
Wed, 08 Aug 2018 05:50:12 GMTImage: https://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2018/engineerstea.gif
Engineers at Caltech have developed a new control algorithm that enables a single drone to herd an entire flock of birds away from the airspace of an airport. The algorithm is presented in a study in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.
...

Engineers at Caltech have developed a new control algorithm that enables a single drone to herd an entire flock of birds away from the airspace of an airport. The algorithm is presented in a study in IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

The project was inspired by the 2009 "Miracle on the Hudson," when US Airways Flight 1549 struck a flock of geese shortly after takeoff and pilots Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles were forced to land in the Hudson River off Manhattan.
"The passengers on Flight 1549 were only saved because the pilots were so skilled," says Soon-Jo Chung, an associate professor of aerospace and Bren Scholar in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science as well as a JPL research scientist, and the principal investigator on the drone herding project. "It made me think that next time might not have such a happy ending. So I started looking into ways to protect airspace from birds by leveraging my research areas in autonomy and robotics."
Current strategies for controlling airspace include modifying the surrounding environment to make it less attractive to birds, using trained falcons to scare flocks off, or even piloting a drone to scare the birds. These strategies can be costly or—in the case of the hand-piloted drone—unreliable, says Chung, who is a researcher at Caltech's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies.
"When herding birds away from an airspace, you have to be very careful in how you position your drone. If it's too far away, it won't move the flock. And if it gets too close, you risk scattering the flock and making it completely uncontrollable. That's difficult to do with a piloted drone."
Herding relies on the ability to manage a flock as a single, contained entity—keeping it together while shifting its direction of travel. Each bird in a flock reacts to changes in the behavior of the birds nearest to it. Effective herding requires an external threat—in this case, the drone—to position itself in such a way that it encourages birds along the edge of a flock to make course changes that then affect the birds nearest to them, who affect birds farther into the flock, and so on, until the entire flock changes course. The positioning has to be precise, however: if the external threat gets too zealous and rushes at the flock, the birds will panic and act individually, not collectively.

In 2013, while he was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chung received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to tackle the problem. Originally, Chung intended to build a self-guided, flapping robot whose flight would mimic that of a falcon, figuring that the bioinspired design would make it even more effective at controlling flocks by presenting them with a natural-seeming threat. While the work in that direction did yield an entirely new style of drone—the "Bat Bot" that Chung unveiled in 2017—he found that an off-the-shelf quadrotor drone was just as effective at herding birds.
To teach the drone to herd autonomously, Chung and his colleagues, including Aditya Paranjape of Imperial College London, one of his former graduate students, studied and derived a mathematical model of flocking dynamics to describe how flocks build and maintain formations, how they respond to threats along the edge of the flock, and how they then communicate that threat through the flock. Their work improves on algorithms designed for herding sheep, which only needed to work in two dimensions, instead of three.
"We carefully studied flock dynamics and interaction between flocks and pursuers to develop a mathematically sound herding algorithm that ensures safe relocation of flocks using autonomous drones," says Kyunam Kim, postdoctoral scholar in aerospace at Caltech and a co-author of the IEEE paper.
Once they were able to generate a mathematical description of flocking behaviors, the researchers reverse engineered it to see exactly how approaching external threats would be responded to by flocks, and then used that information to create a new herding algorithm that produces ideal flight paths for incoming drones to move the flock away from a protected airspace without dispersing it.

"My previous research focused on spacecraft and drone swarms, which turned out to be surprisingly relevant for this project," Chung says.
The team tested the algorithm on a flock of birds near a field in Korea and found that a single drone could keep a flock of dozens of birds out of a designated airspace. The effectiveness of the algorithm is only limited by the number and size of the incoming birds, Chung says, adding that the team plans to explore ways to scale the project up for multiple drones dealing with multiple flocks.

A new report from Oxford University found that manipulation of public opinion over social media platforms is growing at a large scale, despite efforts to combat it. "Around the world, government agencies and political parties are exploiting social media platforms to spread junk news and disinformation, exercise censorship and control, and undermine trust in media, public institutions and science," reports Phys.Org. From the report:

"The number of countries where formally organized social media manipulation occurs has greatly increased, from 28 to 48 countries globally," says Samantha Bradshaw, co-author of the report. "The majority of growth comes from political parties who spread disinformation and junk news around election periods. There are more political parties learning from the strategies deployed during Brexit and the U.S. 2016 Presidential election: more campaigns are using bots, junk news, and disinformation to polarize and manipulate voters."

This is despite efforts by governments in many democracies introducing new legislation designed to combat fake news on the internet. "The problem with this is that these 'task forces' to combat fake news are being used as a new tool to legitimize censorship in authoritarian regimes," says Professor Phil Howard, co-author and lead researcher on the OII's Computational Propaganda project. "At best, these types of task forces are creating counter-narratives and building tools for citizen awareness and fact-checking." Another challenge is the evolution of the mediums individuals use to share news and information. "There is evidence that disinformation campaigns are moving on to chat applications and alternative platforms," says Bradshaw. "This is becoming increasingly common in the Global South, where large public groups on chat applications are more popular."

Hertzberg is a state senator from California and last year, after he introduced a bail reform bill, he noticed that automated accounts on Twitter and Facebook were attacking him and his position. He is currently seeking re-election and one of his opponents in the Democratic primary was a bail agent.

"The bail agents against me had hundreds of bots working in order to create the false impression that there were people against me," Hertzberg said in a recent interview.

For example, he said, one account rapidly responded to tweets about the bill in real time with the message: "Unconstitutional bail reform doesn't work and is racist."

So Hertzberg introduced another bill this year, the first of its kind in the United States, that would compel automated social media accounts to identify themselves as bots; in other words, to disclose their nonpersonhood.

Because bots are only effective if they seem convincingly human. Right?

Depending on how you define them, bots have been around since before most of us were using the internet. Their presence online was considered fairly benevolent, if considered at all, until 2016, when they were among the host of factors used to explain away the election of President Donald Trump.

Since then, bots have become, for many people, a digital boogeyman, a viral weapon that can be wielded to influence political opinions, fool advertisers, prank unknowing social media users and get bad hashtags to trend. (They are also the lifeblood of many users we call influencers.)

Last week, Twitter announced it would remove tens of millions of suspicious accounts to crack down on the bots that can be bought (through third parties) by users who want to inflate the number of their followers. The company also said last month that it has been "locking" almost 10 million suspicious accounts per week and removing others for violating anti-spam policies.

Still, bots are easy to make and widely employed, and social media companies are under no legal obligation to get rid of them. A law that discourages their use could help, but experts aren't sure how the one Hertzberg is trying to push through, in California, might work.

For starters, would bots be forced to identify themselves in every Facebook post? In their Instagram bios? In their Twitter handles?

The measure, SB-1001, a version of which has already left the senate floor and is working its way through the state's Assembly, also doesn't mandate that tech companies enforce the regulation. And it's unclear how a bill that is specific only to California would apply to a global internet.

Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, applauded the spirit of the law but was not as sold on its letter. "This is groundbreaking legislation," he said. "We are on a trajectory where reality, the very fabric of the information we see, can be altered in an unprecedented fashion. When that's done, as the law says, with an intent to mislead, that's a huge problem."

But "you don't want to measure twice, regulate once," he said. "You don't want to put the wrong laws on the books and have unintended consequences."

Jeremy Gillula, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has been critical of the bill since its inception, said the first version was "a little like trying to treat the flu using chemotherapy."

"Not only will it not fix the thing you're trying to fix," he said earlier this month. "It'll cause a lot of collateral damage at the same time."

The bill was drafted by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides consumer ratings about the age-appropriateness of movies and TV shows, in collaboration with the Center for Humane Technology, a group of former employees of big tech companies including Google and Facebook who have banded together to regulate their former employers.

Neither Hertzberg nor Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, was overly concerned with criticism when interviewed about the bill in June. The senator called skepticism "the drivel of people who want to stop progress." He said that the analysis he had seen had been influenced by lobbyists and was flat out wrong.

But after they were interviewed and the bill moved through the assembly's committees, the content of the proposed law changed substantially. The definition of bot grew more precise (from "online account" to "automated online account on an online platform"), and language that recommended an online platform for reporting bots was scrapped. Furthermore, the bill now asks only bots that are hoping to sell consumers good and services, or to influence votes in an election, to identify themselves as bots.

But even with the changes, the bill summons significant constitutional questions, said Ryan Calo, a co-director of the Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington, and Madeline Lamo, a former fellow at the lab.

Lamo said that language in the bill about bots "influencing a vote in an election" ran into a problem that has plagued campaign finance regulations and election-related speech laws: It can be difficult to distinguish speech about political issues from speech explicitly intended to influence voters.

Furthermore, she noted, the bill was simply not crafted to address the problem it had in mind. Insofar as bots have had sway over political views, they have acted at scale, with thousands of automated accounts working to spread a diverse array of messages. It's hard to imagine, she said, that requiring individual accounts to identify themselves in a single state would do much to sap the strength of bot armies.

All parties agree that the bill illustrates the difficulty that lawmakers have in crafting legislation that effectively addresses the problems constituents confront online. As the pace of technological development has raced ahead of government, the laws that exist on the books — not to mention some lawmakers' understandings of technology — have remained comparatively stagnant. And, as Twitter's action last week demonstrates, technology companies have the power to change dynamics on their platforms directly and at the scale that those problems require. Turning a bill into a law can take a long time. And then the law runs the risk of being inexact.

]]>timosmanhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524512-Push-for-bots-of-the-internet-to-reveal-themselves‘Quadrillion Tons’ Of Diamonds May Be Hiding Under Earth’s Surfacehttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524511-‘Quadrillion-Tons’-Of-Diamonds-May-Be-Hiding-Under-Earth’s-Surface&goto=newpost
Sat, 21 Jul 2018 20:30:31 GMThttps://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/07/18/quadrillion-tons-diamond-earth/
The catch is where they are located. Also even if you could get to them, that much would make them as cheap as the sand on a beach.
---Quote---
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (CBS Local) – According to a new study, there may be a massive treasure hiding beneath the Earth’s surface: a “quadrillion tons” of treasure.
...https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/20...diamond-earth/

The catch is where they are located. Also even if you could get to them, that much would make them as cheap as the sand on a beach.

Quote:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (CBS Local) – According to a new study, there may be a massive treasure hiding beneath the Earth’s surface: a “quadrillion tons” of treasure.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say that a massive amount of diamonds may be scattered throughout the planet’s cratonic roots, “the oldest and most immovable sections of rock that lie beneath the center of most continental tectonic plates,” according to the study.

MIT explains that this vast supply of diamonds is likely buried between 90 and 150 miles beneath the Earth’s surface.

“This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it’s relatively common,” Ulrich Faul of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences said in a press release. “We can’t get at them, but still, there is much more diamond there than we have ever thought before.”

MIT scientists reportedly made the discovery while examining sound waves traveling through the planet during seismic events.

“Diamond in many ways is special,” Faul explained. “One of its special properties is, the sound velocity in diamond is more than twice as fast as in the dominant mineral in upper mantle rocks, olivine.”

Although the MIT team estimates a quadrillion tons (or 1,000,000,000,000,000) worth of diamonds is in the cratonic roots, it makes up only about 1 to 2 percent of the rock’s composition.

]]>Zippyjuanhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524511-‘Quadrillion-Tons’-Of-Diamonds-May-Be-Hiding-Under-Earth’s-SurfaceHuge Nuclear Fireball in slow motionhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524462-Huge-Nuclear-Fireball-in-slow-motion&goto=newpost
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 22:25:33 GMTPhotographic proof that even gross evil can be cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt3JVgzOZzEPhotographic proof that even gross evil can be cool.

Within the next few decades, Big Meat and Big Dairy could surpass Big Oil as the world’s biggest climate polluters, a new study by non-profit GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) showed on Wednesday.

The world’s biggest animal protein producers could soon surpass ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP as the largest contributors to climate pollution, according to the study.

IATP and GRAIN jointly published the study that quantifies emissions from 35 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies and reviews their plans to fight climate change.

The report found out that the five largest meat and dairy corporations combined - JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America, and Fonterra - are already responsible for more annual greenhouse gas emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell, or BP. According to one figure in the report, the combined emissions of the top five companies are on par with those of Exxon and significantly higher than those of Shell or BP.

Moreover, the report also found that the combined emissions of the top 20 meat and dairy companies surpass the emissions from entire nations, such as Germany, Canada, Australia, the UK, or France.

...

Full article at link(s).

"The solution is simple.. electric cows."

Perhaps there is truth to this. Then again, considering their reputation, perhaps not.

I think the real question here to ask is "who benefits"? If we, as in you and I, could create an artificial crisis by Fearmongering, the way the people in power do, what kind of position would we have to be in to benefit? Its not always about money, but power. If the issue was pushed hard enough, would we be able to eventually get laws passed that prohibited people from consuming meat or dairy? Would we be able to make Milk Crimes? Would that open further doors to have Laws that control very specific details of peoples normal behavior by criminalizing normal behavior? Would we, again, you and I, be able to exploit this to make a buck off of it? Perhaps more power? How could we benefit, if we were to try to think like the Global Abusers do?

(I also wasnt really sure where to post this thread...)
]]>DamianTVhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524417-Meat-Dairy-Industry-Surpass-Big-Oil-As-World-s-Biggest-PollutersHydrail: Then There Were Fourteenhttp://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?524377-Hydrail-Then-There-Were-Fourteen&goto=newpost
Wed, 18 Jul 2018 22:36:06 GMTImage: http://www.netnewsledger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/highspeed-German-Rail.jpg
Stan Thompson, Hydrail pioneer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrail), 12 July 2018
Mooresville – Transportation – Poland just became the 13th country to announce a hydrail project. They are investigating the potential to extract hydrogen from coal and use it to power freight railways.
Poland joins...

Mooresville – Transportation – Poland just became the 13th country to announce a hydrail project. They are investigating the potential to extract hydrogen from coal and use it to power freight railways.

Poland joins 12 other countries that have begun the transition from diesel and overhead electric train traction to hydrail—traction that carries the electric power onboard, stored as hydrogen and returned to electricity in fuel cells. This cuts about US$10 million per mile from construction expense and US$150,000 per mile per year from maintenance.

Hydrogen Powered Rail First Raised in Thunder Bay by Dalton McGuinty

It’s been a decade and a half since Canada’s Federal Government partnered with the American Bush Administration to develop the first hydrail mining locomotive and test it in Quebec. It’s been almost 11 years since Premier Dalton McGuinty and Bombardier proposed, prophetically, to introduce hydrail for Ontario’s GO trains.

About that time, if I remember correctly, the International Union of Railways in Paris and perhaps the British Railway Safety and Standards Board also asked Bombardier to build a proof-of-concept hydrail train to prompt the coming European transition which Alstom’s and Hydrogenics’ announcement finally sparked in 2014.

Hydrail is the New Standard

Today it’s clear that hydrail will become the standard for rail traction over the coming decade. Besides the 13 countries that are on the move (Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Germany, India, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, the UK and the USA), five major train builders either have hydrail rolling-stock in production or have announced product and/or sales: Alstom (France), CRRC (China), ICF (India), JREast (Japan), Stadler (Switzerland) and Siemens (Germany).

The ascendency of political Conservatism may actually advance the speed of hydrail’s deployment in North America. Canada and Europe decry climate change denial by the US Government but they overlook three critical points: (1) that is was the Obama administration that pulled funding from hydrogen research that had been strongly supported by President George W. Bush. Before President Obama’s Transportation Secretary, Anthony Foxx, was appointed, he repeatedly refused offers to be briefed on hydrail and would not allow it to be considered for transit projects during his tenure in Washington. (2) The current Conservative administration has a designated point person for hydrogen and fuel cells advancement in the Department of Energy. Dr. Sunita Satyapal was the Opening Keynote Speaker at Ontario’s Hydrail Symposium last November. (3) The new Secretary of Transportation is not an ideologue but a pro with deep roots, having served as Deputy Secretary of Transportation from 1989 to 1991 under President George Herbert Walker Bush (“Bush 1”).

Of particular note, Chao’s recently appointed FRA Administrator, Ron Batory, is a life-long railway professional, having retired as President and CEO of the Conrail freight railroad to take his present position. Administrator Batory has appointed Chris Hess as DOT’s hydrail point person.

To the extent that assuring that the public gets top value for tax money expended remains a keystone of political conservatism, hydrail is a clear fit. The vast sums needed to raise bridges and tunnel clearances to expand 1880s external track electrification is a poor use of public funds—even without the risk that it might have to be scrapped before its amortization life ends because the state-of-the-art has moved on and the maintenance cost has become prohibitive.

In the past when I’ve written in support of Thunder Bay’s becoming a hydrail rolling-stock supplier for North America, I have felt a bit shy about meddling from South of the Border. But now I’ve got a real dog in the fight.

The State of North Carolina’s railway system—affiliated with Amtrak—wants to offer the first hydrail service in the USA. As with Germany’s Alstom Coradia ILints in Europe, once the new technology is seen there will be a rush to the silent, uncluttered, potentially carbon-free next generation of rail traction. In the USA there are something like 330,000 miles of track—of which less than 1% is electrified, or ever can be for obvious capital cost reasons.

Hydrail essentially electrifies the whole 330,000-mile network as fast as the new trains can be produced. How fast that might be is Thunder Bay’s business as well as Mooresville’s !

Picture an independent paradise that can store energy indefinitely, access it instantly, and export it to the grid.

Such a place exists. Welcome!

Stone Edge Farm has developed two exciting self-sustaining products – electricity and hydrogen – with a revolutionary system, the MicroGrid.

Major Assets

The following are principal components of the Stone Edge Farm MicroGrid. For a generic list of electrical terms and devices, please see our Glossary.

Aquion Energy aqueous hybrid ion battery

Also known as a sodium ion battery, this 28kW/380kWh storage device connects two strings of seven LM100 48V battery modules in series that are combined in one 672V string by the Ideal Power power conversion system (see below). The battery’s unique chemistry combines abundant, non-toxic materials: an alkali-ion saltwater electrolyte, manganese oxide cathode, carbon titanium phosphate composite anode, and synthetic cotton separator. It is non-flammable, non-explosive, and truly sustainable.

Capstone C65 microturbine.

This 65kW natural gas-fired variable external combustion engine operates at 90,000 rpm with peak efficiency at 80% (51-52kw), producing electricity at a cost of five to seven cents per kilowatt. Essentially a stationary jet engine, it has one moving part and runs on two foil-air bearings, more quietly with increased speed. Exhaust temperature can reach 588° F. It operates on a 480V/3P service and does produce a small amount of carbon dioxide; we hope to power the microtubine with hydrogen by 2018, working in conjunction with the University of California, Irvine Power Laboratory. http://www.capstoneturbine.com/products/c65

Emerson ASCO 7000, 300 series automatic transfer switches.

These switches connect the MicroGrid to or isolate it from the utility grid. When the switches separate, they create a physical opening, an air space. If the utility grid fails and the MicroGrid is already producing power, the ATSs can automatically route power onto the grid. https://www.vertivco.com/globalasset...h-brochure.pdf

Energy Storage Systems iron flow cell battery.

This 10kW/65kWh iron flow battery is non-toxic with an iron and saltwater electrolyte, patented pH stabilization to ensure a long life of over 20,000 cycles and >70% peak round-trip efficiency. Two 500-gallon tanks hold the electrolyte fluid that is phosphorescent green when charged and rusty brown when discharged. The 480V/3P battery electroplates (deposits iron) on the negative side to charge, and deplates on the positive side to discharge (returning iron into the tank). Environmentally safe and recyclable, it has no hazardous materials, is not flammable or corrosive, and has no noxious fumes. http://www.essinc.com/wp-content/upl...heet50-400.pdf

This optimizer was designed on site at the Stone Edge Farm MicroGrid by one of our interns, Jorge Elizondo. It translates disparate communications from numerous technological devices into a common software language. His version 2.0 has no screen, can be accessed by cell phone and installed by a regular electrician. It connects with and integrates any energy asset. This local control failsafe device is designed to work if the other two control systems are lost or compromised. http://www.heilaiq.com/

The electrolyzer consists of three pairs of alkaline cells operated in pairs (2, 4, or 6) as well as purifiers and low- and high-pressure compressors. Hydrogen gas is created using surplus solar energy or energy from the microturbine to split water into hydrogen and oxygen; up to 12 kg of hydrogen can be produced every 24 hours, enough to fuel one car or two forklifts. If a voltage rise threatens MicroGrid stability, the electrolyzer turns on as programmable load reserve capacity. The electrolyzer initially generates 99.8% pure hydrogen compressed to 125 psi. Oxygen scrubbers and desiccant dryers increase purity to 99.999%, while twin compressors boost pressure to 6,000 psi. The electrolyzer operates on a 240V/1P circuit with a 50A breaker. Bulk storage capacity of hydrogen gas on the farm currently is 500 kg at 250 psi and 225 kg at 3,250 psi, enough to operate our fuel cells for 12 days. Eventually we will store 51,000 kg. http://residentialhydrogenpower.com/

Millenium Reign Energy Series 3 hydrogen storage and fueling station

Hydrogen is stored here in 24 one-kg red carbon fiber and steel tanks at 6,000 psi. At that pressure, the J2600 dispenser will fill half a tank for a 150-mile range in the Toyota Mirai fuel cell cars http://residentialhydrogenpower.com/

PlugPower ReliOn (GenSure) E-2200 hydrogen fuel cell hives

The fuel cell hives reverse the electrolysis process, transforming the chemical energy freed during the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen to electrical energy. The byproduct is water. Each of three hive cabinets contains a stack of four 2.33kW units (total 28 kW) of PEM (polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cells. If individual modular units fail, they are easily removed and replaced. The kWh capacity is dependent upon the quantity of hydrogen stored. http://www.plugpower.com/wp-content/...gsm_012716.pdf

Redflow zinc bromide ZBM2 flow cell batteries

These two units combined displace energy at a rate of 10kW peak with a capacity of 20kWh. The batteries have a fire retardant electrolyte, no thermal runaway, and do not require active cooling. http://redflow.com/products/redflow-2bm-2/

SimpliPhi Power Smart-Tech lithium ferro phosphate battery

This battery pack, consisting of seven 3.4kW units, displaces energy at a rate of 23.8 kW, holds 45kWh capacity, lasts up to 10,000 cycles, and operates at 98% round-trip efficiency. Non-toxic and hyper-inert, it is extremely safe and completely recyclable. It has no flammable components (the lithium is tightly bound), no possibility of thermal runaway, and requires no ventilation or cooling. It can be overcharged, crushed or burned, and provides greater energy density with no need for heat mitigation. http://simpliphipower.com/

Sony lithium iron phosphate batteries

This stack of eight units displaces energy at a rate of 2.4kW and has a 9.6kWh capacity.

Tesla Motors lithium cobalt ion batteries

Our Tesla Powerpack battery was the first unit ever made at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada. This utility-scale battery consists of five 50kW/95kWh cabinet-and-rack units, each containing 16 individual pods of lithium cobalt ion batteries identical to those that power the manufacturer’s cars. The 250kW/475kWh capacity battery, the largest on the farm, can discharge a substantial amount of power in a short period of time. Product life is 5,000 cycles. Liquid thermal control systems inside white containers enhance cooling. When the MicroGrid operates in island mode, the Powerpack can generate its own 60 Hz cycles to serve in a master role.

North America’s first power-to-gas energy storage facility using hydrogen is now operational.

Owned and operated under a joint venture between hydrogen technology specialists Hydrogenics Corporation and Enbridge Gas Distribution, the Markham Energy Storage Facility provides regulation services under contract to the Independent Electricity System Operator of Ontario, Canada.

Regulation service is an important reliability function that corrects for short-term changes in electricity use and helps compensate for real-time supply and demand imbalances. The Enbridge-Hydrogenics 2.5 MW facility – designed and built on a 5 MW scalable platform – features the company’s next-generation polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzer technology, which has the highest power density and smallest footprint of any such system in the world.

The hydrogen produced can also be used for a number of purposes such as fueling cars and trains. It can also be blended into the natural gas system to offset traditional natural gas and supply building heating, heavy duty transportation fuels and dispatchable power generation markets. https://insights.globalspec.com/arti...o-gas-facility